father were sending shudders through Thomas’s thin frame, and Matthew could see the tears in his friend’s dark blue eyes.
“Where’s your father?” he asked. “Where are the certificates? Talk to me, Tom.”
“I gave them to him, but I don’t know if he’ll read them. He wouldn’t let me speak, Matt. I think I’ve screwed it up. I’m so sorry. I should have listened to you.”
“There’s no time for that now. Has your father gone inside?”
Thomas nodded miserably.
“Well, we’ve got nothing to lose then, have we? Let’s see what happens. We haven’t come this far to miss out on the last act.”
Matthew started to pull Thomas toward the door of the court.
“Sergeant Hearns told us not to go back in court after we’d finished giving evidence,” protested Thomas weakly, but Matthew took no notice. The fight had gone out of Thomas, and he put up no resistance as Matthew pushed open the door and pulled him down onto a seat at the back of the court.
A ripple of interest ran along the press benches as the reporters turned to look at the teenagers, but then they all settled back into their seats as Sir Peter Robinson took the oath. His voice sounded dead and his face was white, but Greta’s attention was concentrated on Thomas. It filled him with a raw pleasure to watch the anxiety growing in her green eyes until finally he could not resist the temptation to bait her any longer. He looked at his father and then he looked back at Greta and smiled meaningfully. The effect on Greta was instantaneous. She gripped the rail of the dock and the color drained from her face. Then she was suddenly writing something on a piece of paper and trying to get the attention of Patrick Sullivan sitting several yards away with his back to the dock. Thomas watched him turn around and get up to speak to Greta while with another part of his brain Thomas listened to the beginning of his father’s evidence.
“Tell us your name, please,” asked Miles Lambert.
“I am Sir Peter Robinson.”
“And your occupation?”
“I am the minister of defense.” Peter’s voice was entirely flat, without any intonation or emphasis.
Patrick Sullivan put a note in front of Miles Lambert, but the barrister did not look down to read it. There was no reason to. All he was doing was introducing his witness to the jury, getting them warmed up for the glowing character reference that Sir Peter was going to give his wife.
“How long have you known Lady Greta Robinson?” he asked.
“About three and a half years. She started working for me in 1997.”
“And it’s right to say that you were married last December.”
“Right and wrong.”
“Excuse me, Sir Peter. I don’t quite understand that answer.”
“Let me clarify it for you then,” said Peter evenly. “We certainly went through a ceremony of marriage at the Chelsea Registry Office on the twentieth of December last year, but it is now quite clear to me in the light of these documents that the ceremony was not valid.”
“Not valid?”
“Yes. Because the person I thought I was marrying was already married to someone else, and I have every reason to think that her husband was then, and in fact still is, very much alive.”
Miles’s mouth opened and closed and opened again, but for the first time in many years no words came out. He glanced down too late at the scrawled note that Patrick Sullivan had put on the table in front of him.
“Miles,” it said. “Don’t ask him any questions. He’ll destroy us if you do. Close the case now. Greta.”
She might have told me before, thought Miles bitterly. Before her bloody husband or whoever he is got up there and smashed up all my work.
The judge allowed the heavy silence to build in the courtroom for a few moments before he broke it himself.
“I see that you’ve got two documents there, Sir Peter,” he said in his usual courteous manner. “Perhaps you’d be good enough to tell us what they are.”
“This one’s Greta’s marriage certificate,” said Peter. “The certificate for her first marriage, I mean. It shows that she married Jonathan Barry Rowes on November twenty-sixth, 1989, in Liverpool — ”
“I’m sorry to interrupt you, Sir Peter, but did you just say ‘Rose’?” asked the judge. “As in the flower?”
“Yes, that’s right. It’s spelled R-O-W-E-S but it’s obviously pronounced like the flower.”
“Thank you. Please carry on.”
“This other one is Greta’s birth certificate,” said Peter, holding up the red-edged piece of paper. His voice was toneless and mechanical, completely at variance with the extraordinary things that he was saying. “The father’s name on it is the same as the father’s name on the marriage certificate. It proves it’s Greta who married Rowes, and I believe Rowes is the man who killed my wife and tried to kill my son two weeks ago.”
“Yes, thank you,” said the judge, raising his voice a little in order to quell a sudden outbreak of whispering in the court. “Well, the jury had better see these exhibits, don’t you think, Mr. Lambert? They really seem to be quite relevant, particularly given your client’s assertion yesterday that she doesn’t know anyone called Rosie or Rose.”
“My Lord, I request an adjournment,” said Miles, recovering his voice but not his composure.
“Why, Mr. Lambert? I can’t see the need. This is your witness, you know. You called him.”
“My Lord, if you won’t grant me an adjournment, will you at least let me address you in the absence of the jury?”
“Yes, Mr. Lambert, certainly you may, but first the jury must be allowed to finish examining the documents produced by your witness. Let’s make them exhibits twenty-one and twenty-two, Miss Hooks.”
The two certificates had just gotten as far as the Indian juror with the turban when Greta couldn’t contain herself any longer.
“Peter! Look at me, Peter!” she shouted to her husband across the courtroom. “It’s not what you think. It was just a stupid teenage thing. We got divorced years ago. I had nothing to do with this murder!”
Peter turned to look at his wife for the last time, and his composure cracked. He was suddenly like a drowning man, struggling in vain to swim up to the surface. He opened his mouth but no words came.
Perhaps Greta took his silence for encouragement, but she certainly lost no time in intensifying her appeal. “I made you what you are now, Peter,” she cried. “You know that. What did Anne ever do for you? All she cared about was Thomas and that house. I saved you from her. I set you free.”
“I’ll never be free again. You killed her, Greta. And then you made me part of what you’d done. You and your psychopath.”
The words were forced from Peter and came between great gulps. But they enraged Greta. It was as if she realized for the first time that she had lost him.
“You’re a fool, Peter. That’s what you are. You want it all for free, don’t you? The power and the glory and the beautiful girl. But there’s a price to pay. Just like there always is. You don’t get something for nothing, Peter. Not in the real world.”
Greta drew breath for more, and the reporters’ pencils raced across their notepads. But there was to be no more. The security guard whom Greta had pushed aside at the start of her outburst had now recovered. She tackled Greta to the floor and then manhandled her through the door at the back of the dock.
“Yes, take her down,” said Judge Granger in a commanding voice. “And Mr. Lambert, I’ll give you your adjournment, but your client will stay in custody until I say otherwise. Perhaps you better take some further instructions. Your client seems to have quite a lot to say.”
The courtroom emptied very quickly after the judge and jury had gone out. The reporters needed to phone the day’s sensation through to their editors. Soon Thomas and Matthew found themselves all alone except for Sir Peter, who continued to sit in the witness box gazing steadily into the middle distance. He looked as if something inside him had irrevocably broken, as if the motor that had driven him so hard for so many years had spluttered and died. Matthew saw Thomas staring at his father and quietly left the court.
Thomas wanted to go over to his father, but he hung back, rooted to his seat. He had the words for confronting his father but none for getting close to him. They had been strangers for too long. It was Peter who finally broke the silence, and his voice came as if from a great distance away.
“I’m sorry, Tom,” he said. “I’ve let you and Anne down all because of some stupid infatuation. I’ve betrayed
